5 Steps to upgrade your health
AND live your best life!
Last week we had Functional Medicine and Precision Health practitioner Mirthe Eckl at our Arctic Juice & Café, Verbier for a chat on the 5 simplest steps you can start doing today that will help you achieve optimal health, slow ageing and feel pumped with great energy. She explained some of the newest research findings behind these simple strategies, for you to make educated choices based on science, rather than another fad diet to fall off. (As we say at Arctic: No fads, No BS!). In case you missed it, she has summarised some of it below for you, or watch the recording here.
Ever pondered about the difference in Lifespan vs Health Span? Although average life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last 100 years, this has not been accompanied by an equivalent increase in healthy life expectancy.
Rock your Health Span
Age-associated disease such as cardiovascular, type 2 diabetes, neurodegenerative, and others, render ‘old age’ (with the onset getting younger) into an often times dreaded time period, dependent on medications and declining bodily and cognitive functions. We survive rather than thrive.
Even throughout early life we are faced with an epidemic of conditions such as autoimmune, obesity, diabetes, autism, ADHD, anxiety and depression, PMS, endometriosis, IBS, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, cancer, and many other problems that can reduce quality of life significantly.
For most of us, we wish to live a long and fulfilled life, whether we feel we have a purpose on this planet we would like to yet achieve, or simply because we enjoy living. In order to fully live, we don't want to just live long, but, most often more importantly, have the cognitive ability to achieve our dreams and goals, a working memory and a balanced mood that allows us to be in charge of our emotions and actions.
We’d like a strong body that allows us to do daily and joyful activities without injury or pain, to feel energetic, and to look radiant and youthful. All this equates to quality of life for most of us, and has in recent years been termed as Health Span.
The ‘9 hallmarks of ageing’
Scientists have established ‘9 hallmarks of ageing’, and termed ageing a ‘disease’, meaning our bodily systems deteriorating and ‘gone wrong’.
In nerdy terms, these are:
Genomic instability
Telomere attrition
Epigenetic alterations
Loss of Proteostasis
Deregulated nutrient sensing
Mitochondrial dysfunction
Cellular senescence
Stem cell exhaustion
Altered intercellular communication
Much research is dedicated to finding drugs that target and modify these pathways. All sounds complicated and too far removed from day-to-day?
That’s where the Functional Medicine approach comes into play.
WHAT TO EAT & WHEN NOT TO EAT?
Within Functional Medicine, we believe food should be used to both nourish your cells and functions (80%) and also your soul (20%). The aim is a lifelong approach to optimal health and wellbeing by supplying the body with all the building blocks it needs to thrive, while removing things that may hamper it. Time to get ahead of the game, and get into flow!
Soul Food
Think about this in terms of building a house. It can be built out of straw, or bricks. You have the option to build your body and mind out of the highest quality and lasting materials. – or not.
Benefits:
Reduced inflammation
Fat loss, especially around the midline
Improved energy levels and sleep
Mental clarity
Hormone balance
Mood suppor0t
Gut health and a balance between good and bad microbes (anti-candida)
Anti-ageing
FOODS TO INCLUDE MOST DAYS:
High quality protein
About 0.8-1.3g/ kg body weight per day, unless you have a condition that may warrant lower intake such as a history of cancer. This will help stabilise blood sugar, increase your metabolism (help make hormones such as thyroid), fertility and libido, energy levels, mood (our neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin for focus and happiness are made from protein!) and much more
Plenty of vegetables
The old ‘eat the rainbow’ recommendation still holds true. You want to mix them up, getting some cruciferous veg such as broccoli and cauliflower to support liver and hormone health, to make our master antioxidant glutathione, and more. Dark purples and leafy greens for DNA health (supporting methylation which decides on which genes may get turned on or off), antioxidants, heart health, anti-inflammatory properties, fiber to support your gut microbiome. Add in some seaweed for thyroid health.
Small amounts of high quality carbohydrates
Such as found in real fruit, or tubers, beans, chickpeas, dark chocolate etc. Berries have been shown in many studies to be cardioprotective, apples help lower histamine (via its quercetin content), tubers and legumes support gut health if consumed in small doses and properly prepared by supplying your gut microbiome with food (resistant starch!).
But overall stick to a low carbohydrate intake to keep your blood sugar stable, reduce advanced glycation end products (sugars attaching themselves to your cells and ‘rusting’ them), keep your cells healthy and strong. You may even want to incorporate intermittent periods of ketosis, for its anti-inflammatory, rejuvenating benefits. Unless one has a specific condition that may necessitate for one to stay in a longer ketogenic state, current research indicates it may be best to not stay in ketosis continuously, but cycle in and out of it. Not always being in ketosis appears to be important for your metabolism, including hormones like thyroid and leptin, connective tissue health, heart muscle health, keeping sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, etc) and stress chemicals (cortisol etc) balanced.
Good fats!
You likely have heard of the importance of omega 3s in fish, but they really are just that important. Omega 3s as found in salmon, shrimps and more seafood are crucial to lower inflammation, support brain, heart, hormone health, mood, cellular functioning and so much more. Stay clear of tuna, as unless you find baby tuna, its mercury downside outweighs the omega 3 upside. Small amounts of omega 6s found for example in nuts and seeds are essential also, but need to be in a good balance with omega 3s to not turn inflammatory. Olive oil has been shown to lower cardiovascular risk, coconut oil to speed up metabolism and ketosis. Saturated fats such as found in cheese and meats (and coconut oil) have been given a bad rap for increasing LDL (the bad kind of) cholesterol. However, newer research reveals that saturated fats actually increase the particle size of the LDL, making it less dangerous, so small amounts as found in a balanced wholefoods diet, along with some olive oil can be part of a healthy lifestyle, as long as one doesn’t have a genetic condition called hereditary hypercholesterolemia, in which case caution may have to be practised, and blood levels best monitored with a Functional Medicine practitioner experienced in this field.
WHEN NOT TO EAT – Aka intermittent fasting
You may choose to stick to the traditional 3 meals per day (with no snacking in between!), or incorporate intermittent fasting on some or most days of the week.
Fasting is another way of achieving ketosis and with it autophagy, aka cellular housekeeping. Being in a fasted state drops insulin and will in fact put our bodies into a ketogenic state. Cellular renewal is turned on more powerfully if we fast than if we add a bunch of fats to get into ketosis. Even the greatest, organic omega 3 fats and olive oil can get oxidised and create more free radical damage if consumed excessively.
Think of it as in how much harder it is to tidy up the house if you have people and kids visiting, rather than moving them out into the garden while you tidy inside.
Same goes for the body, if we are constantly eating, the body is busy digesting and tidying up after each meal, without having the ability to do a proper deep clean. to get rid of any old, sick or mutated cells by our intrinsic mechanism called autophagy. Our bodies are actually quite amazing at being able to stay healthy and ‘young’, if only we give it the chance to do its job.
The different types of Fasting
There are different forms of fasting, from a daily intermittent fast where you compress the ‘feeding window’ into anything between 2 to 8 hours by eating only one or two meals, to fasting once a week for a full day, to longer term versions. There are real water fasts and fasting mimicking techniques.
The shorter fasts (up to 18 hours per day) allow our bodies to turn on our body’s cleaning mechanism, getting rid of old, sick and mutated cells, to shed a few kilos, without affecting our metabolism or hormones negatively.
Longer fasts have been shown to turbocharge cellular clean-up and activate our own stem cells, however may affect hormones and should not be done without supervision.
Ideally don’t wait with your first meal until much past noon, as research shows that eating earlier in the day has a completely different metabolic response in the body (aka on cholesterol, cortisol, inflammatory markers etc), than if eating the same meal but late in the day.
Especially women appear to benefit from not waiting with breaking their fast past noon, and not to fast more than 24 hours on a regular basis, unless they have a specific health condition that warrants it. Again, best to work with an experienced practitioner in that case.
Most important is to not accept the status quo if it’s not working for you. The knowledge and tools are out there to live longer, feel more energised, and look more sexy! Thanks Mirthe for a great Arctic Talk.